The American Missionary. Volume 42, No. 05, May, 1888. Various
IN INDIAN SCHOOLS
BY SECRETARY STRIKEY.
This question is not settled. One thing that has kept it unsettled has been the uncertain use of the term "missionary schools" in the Orders of the Indian Department. What is precisely a missionary school? Let me try to explain. There are three kinds of schools in the nomenclature of the Indian Office, based on the sources of their support.
1. Government Schools, supported wholly by Government appropriations—such as those at Carlisle, Genoa, etc. These may be left out of the account in this discussion, for no one objects to the Government's directing the studies in them.
2. Contract Schools, so called because the missionary societies which sustain them receive under contract with the Government a certain amount of money in aid of their support. The school at Santee, Nebraska, and the school at Yankton, Dakota, are specimens of this class. But these are mission schools, for the societies which support them would not continue to do so for a day except for their missionary character; and yet these schools are classed by the Department not as missionary but as contract schools.
3. Missionary Schools, which are supported wholly by missionary funds, the Government contributing nothing. Here, again, in the recent order, the Department employs the confusing use of terms, speaking in general terms of "missionary schools," and then of missionary schools under the charge of "native Indian teachers," and at remote points; the inference being that the white teacher of a missionary school, though it may be in a place so remote that neither the pupils nor the people can understand the English language, cannot teach in the vernacular.
With these explanations we present, under date of Feb. 11, 1888,
THE LATEST ORDERS OF THE DEPARTMENT
1. No text-books in the vernacular will be allowed in any school where children are placed under contract or where the Government contributes, in any manner whatever, to the support of the school; no oral instruction in the vernacular will be allowed at such schools. The entire curriculum must be in the English language.
2. The vernacular may be used in missionary schools only for oral instruction in morals and religion, where it is deemed to be an auxiliary to the English language in conveying such instruction; and only native Indian teachers will be permitted to otherwise teach in any Indian vernacular; and these native teachers will only be allowed so to teach in schools not supported in whole or in part by the Government and at remote points, where there are no Government or contract schools where the English language is taught. These native teachers are only allowed to teach in the vernacular with a view of reaching those Indians who cannot have the advantage of instruction in English, and such instruction must give way to the English-teaching schools as soon as they are established where the Indians can have access to them.
3. A limited theological class of Indian young men may be trained in the vernacular at any purely missionary school, supported exclusively by missionary societies, the object being to prepare them for the ministry, whose subsequent work shall be confined to preaching unless they are employed as teachers in remote settlements, where English schools are inaccessible.
4. These rules are not intended to prevent the possession or use by any Indian of the Bible published in the vernacular, but such possession or use shall not interfere with the teaching of the English language to the extent and in the manner hereinbefore directed.
The gravamen of the objections urged in all this controversy is that the Government has no right to interfere with these mission schools; in the first place, in excluding all use of the vernacular in contract schools, even for religious instruction, and in the next place, in controlling the studies of the mission schools supported wholly by missionary money and in excluding white teachers from vernacular schools. The missionary societies have found by long experience that these mission schools in which the vernacular is taught, especially in remote places, are the most effective, and in many cases the only modes by which the people can be reached by the Gospel. The pupils are taught to read the Bible and it is carried by them to their homes. Now we ask, is it the function of the Government of the United States to dictate in matters so purely religious and to override the Christian churches in the choice of their most approved methods of disseminating the Gospel?
PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S LETTER
The President, under date of March 29, 1888, in response to some resolutions adopted by the Philadelphia M.E. Conference, writes a letter on this subject, which deserves careful and candid consideration, both for what it concedes and for what it does not concede. We present the portion of the letter bearing upon the points at issue.
"Secular teaching is the object of the ordinary Government schools, but surely there can be no objection to reading a chapter in the Bible in English, or in Dakota if English could not be understood, at the daily opening of those schools, as is done in very many other well-regulated secular schools. It may be, too, that the use of words in the vernacular may be sometimes necessary to aid in communicating a knowledge of the English language, but the use of the vernacular should not be encouraged or continued beyond the limit of such necessity, and the "text books," the "oral instruction" in a general sense, and the curriculum certainly should be in English. In missionary schools moral and religious instruction may be given in the vernacular as an auxiliary to English in conveying such instruction. Here, while the desirability of some instruction in morals and religion is recognized, the extreme value of learning the English language is not lost sight of. And the provision which follows, that only native teachers shall "otherwise" (that is, except for moral or religious instruction) teach the vernacular, and only in remote places and until Government or contract schools are established, is in exact keeping with the purpose of the Government to exclude the Indian languages from the schools as far as is consistent with a due regard for the continuance of moral and religious teaching in the missionary schools, and except in such cases as the exclusion would result in the entire neglect of secular or other instruction."
On this letter let me remark:
1. That it concedes what has not heretofore been granted, the reading of the Bible in the vernacular in contract schools and its use in explaining the English. We accept this concession with gratification.
2. But it makes no concession whatever (beyond that made in the order of the Commissioner) in regard to the use of the vernacular in schools supported wholly by missionary funds, or in the employment of white teachers in vernacular schools in remote districts. Until concessions are made on these points, the controversy will go forward.
The aim of the Government is expedient, in trying to secure ultimately the use of the English language among the Indians. The aim of the missionary societies is to fulfil an imperative duty, in trying to reach the Indians with the Gospel in the most effective methods. There should be mutual respect for these aims; the Government should yield to the conscientious conviction of the missionary societies as to methods for giving religious instruction, and the missionary societies should co-operate with the Government in introducing the English language as rapidly as possible consistently with their higher aim. I venture to suggest an outline of Regulations that would probably attain both these objects and meet other objections to the ruling of the Department that are not removed by the President's letter.
DETAILS OF PROPOSED REGULATIONS
1. No text-books in the vernacular will be allowed in any Government school, supported wholly by the Government; no oral instruction in the vernacular will be allowed at such schools. The entire curriculum must be in the English language.
2. In contract schools supported in part by missionary societies, the vernacular may be used only for the reading of the Sacred Scriptures, and for oral instruction in morals and religion and where it is deemed to be an auxiliary to the English language in conveying such instruction.
3. In all "missionary schools" supported entirely by missionary or benevolent funds, no restrictions will be put upon the use of the vernacular, with the understanding, however, that the English language shall be introduced as rapidly as those conducting these schools shall deem compatible with the higher aim—religious teaching; and that when these schools shall be prepared to use the English language wholly, the Department will give them a place